That’s all the time the Phoenix Suns needed to get on the scoreboard. That’s all 76ers coach Brett Brown needed to see of Monday’s game, before calling a timeout.

Signaling for a stoppage a half-minute into a game is somewhat unorthodox, but it didn’t look from Brown’s vantage point that the Sixers were prepared to play defense.

“That’s because we weren’t,” Brown said.

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Using pace and pinpoint shooting, Phoenix poured it on early to dispatch the Sixers, 124-113, at Wells Fargo Center.

The Suns dropped 40 first-quarter points, their single-best scoring output for any quarter this season. They also shot 77.3 percent, missing only five of their first 22 attempts from the floor, in the opening 12 minutes of the game.

“We didn’t come out the way we intended,” Brown said. “We want to end this middle-third (of the season) being a better defensive team. We talk about it. We drill it. We show it...To start the way we started the game at home is disappointing. That’s the bottom line.”

The Sixers cut their deficit to eight points, at 104-96 with 5:44 to go, on Evan Turner’s crafty layup. Turner drove the lane, switched hands and went left-handed on the scoop shot to make it a contest for the first time since the middle of the third quarter.

But Gerald Green knocked down a 3-pointer from the left side, extending Phoenix’s lead to 13 points with 3:13 remaining. Green scored 11 of his game-high 30 points in the fourth quarter.

“He was hot,” Brown said.

The Sixers (14-30), who have lost 10 of their last 12 games, never led against Phoenix. They got a team-best 22 points from Michael Carter-Williams and Evan Turner turned in 21 points and six rebounds. Thad Young added 21 points and Spencer Hawes totaled 18 points and nine boards.

For the Suns (26-18), one of the best pace teams in the league, it was a game of good ball movement and pushing the tempo. Green led the way with a season-high 30 points on 10-for-12 shooting, Goran Dragic had 23 points and seven assists and Miles Plumlee paired 14 points with 13 rebounds.

It was that turnaround hook shot from two feet out by PJ Tucker, though, that got it all started. The ease with which Tucker scored had to infuriate Brown, who was hoarse after the game.

“We made some careless mistakes,” Carter-Williams said. “We were supposed to switch off (the Suns’ Chandler) Frye. We didn’t cut off the baseline low. He just wanted to make sure we weren’t going to make that mistake the whole night.”

Out of the timeout, however, the Sixers didn’t fare much better.

The Suns made seven of their first eight shots from inside 10 feet, and 10 of their first 11 shots overall. Phoenix staked a 21-9 lead, and Brown called yet another timeout. This one was with seven minutes left in the first. By the end of the first quarter, Phoenix had taken a 40-26 lead in a more unconventional fashion. While the Suns were pounding the paint for 18 points, they also made eight of nine shots attempted outside of the paint.

“Any time you let a team jump out on you like that,” Young said, “it’s going to be hard to recoup that – those baskets and those stops.”

The Sixers stuck around, trailing by only eight at halftime, because of Phoenix’s inability to hold onto the ball. The Suns had nine turnovers in the game’s first 15 minutes. While they weren’t missing shots, they were coming away empty-handed and keeping the door open for the Sixers.

Midway through the third, the Sixers worked their deficit into the single-digit territory with a 9-2 run. But they shot themselves in the foot from there. Young mishandled a pass that turned into a layup from the Suns’ Leandro Barbosa. Tony Wroten, who never got his shooting on track, dribbled the ball off his foot and Phoenix turned that turnover into a two-point possession. Young took too many steps on the final possession of the third, squandering another chance.

“We couldn’t get the next layer done...We couldn’t get over the hump,” Brown said. “I give Phoenix credit. We tried a lot of different things – plays to get quick 3s, trying to junk it up and scramble and scrap. We just couldn’t get over the hump.

“When you cut to the chase, it starts with the first period and how we started.”

Young’s displeasure with a third quarter that generated nine turnovers for the Sixers earned him a technical foul.

“I said something to him. He gave me a tech. OK, it’s cool. I chalk that one up,” said Young, who only has four technical fouls in his career. “Sometimes you have to come out of your shell a little bit when you’re dealing with certain situations in a game. I felt some of the plays were fouls and that they weren’t fouls when they were called on me.

“It happens. Some people lose their composure sometimes. It happens. On to the next game. Hopefully they forget to take it out of my check.”